About the Play:

Finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Two Trains Running is a full-length drama by August Wilson. In 1969 in Pittsburgh's Hill District, the owner of a local diner fights to stay open as a municipal project encroaches on his establishment. His regulars must deal with racial inequality and the turbulent, changing times.

Two Trains Running is the 1960s chapter of the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright's decade by decade saga of ordinary African Americans in this turbulent century. It takes place in Memphis Lee's coffee shop in a Pittsburgh neighbourhood that is on the brink of economic development. Focus is on the characters who hang out there: a local sage, an elderly man who imparts the secrets of life as learned from a 322 year old sage, an ex con, a numbers runner, a laconic waitress who slashed her legs to keep men away, and a retarded man who was once cheated out of a ham. With Chekhovian obliqueness, the August Wilson reveals simple truths, hopes and dreams, creating a microcosm of an era and a community on the brink of change.

Two Trains Running premiered in 1990 by the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. It opened in 1992 on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre and won the American Theatre Critics' Association Award. The play enjoyed widespread acceptance among leading regional theatres, and has become a popular choice for college and community theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 6 male

What people say:

"What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be African American? The work of August Wilson posits an answer by arguing that the African influence is inseparable from and essential to the American experience. Two Trains Running, set at the end of the '60s Black Power movement, tackles that question with the zeal and virtuosity of a master at the height of his powers." — Laurence Fishburne

"Wilson has written roles for actors to love, complete with riffs and full blown emotional arias." — New York Newsday

"The most comic of the Wilson cycle so far." — The Christian Science Monitor

"Wilson's most delicate and mature work." — Time Magazine

"Wilson's most adventurous and honest attempt to reveal the intimate heart of history." — The New York Times

"These characters are fully imagined — they live … reeling out stories about there past, their angers, their dreams." — Washington Post

About the Playwright:

August Wilson (1945-2005) was one of America's greatest playwrights. An American icon, he depicted the human condition like no other playwright of his time. His crowning achievement is The Pittsburgh Cycle, his series of ten plays depicting the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience in the twentieth century. All of them are set in Pittsburgh's Hill District except for one, which is set in Chicago. The cycle is also known as his Century Cycle. Crafted over nearly 25 years, these works garnered August Wilson a myriad accolades, including eight New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards, a Tony Award and two Pulitzer Prizes.